Nothing is Different (But Everything has Changed)
by Imagination-Parade
Summary: Masrani begins to make decisions about the future of Jurassic World & they both want to give in, to go back, maybe not forever, but for today, but neither wants to be the first to admit it. Masrani Global hands Owen an itinerary, and Claire's not surprised when they hand her a copy, too. The plane for Costa Rica leaves in six hours. They're going back.
1. Chapter 1

_Hi everyone! I didn't have enough characters in the summary to say this, but this is the story of Claire and Owen's first day back on Isla Nublar and at Jurassic World._

 _This is technically the sequel to my other two_ Jurassic World _stories (third to "The First 48" and "Until Everything is Normal")_ _though I don't think you'd necessarily have to read those two to get this one. This one's going to be five chapters, and as always, nothing's mine, and I hope you guys enjoy the story!_

* * *

Seventeen days.

That's how long it takes before Masrani Global decides to send people back to Isla Nublar. Just seventeen goddamn days.

Claire gets invited back into the need-to-know, hush-hush, big girl meetings as soon as the investigation against her clears, and she soon learns two things she wishes she could change but knows she has no control over.

First, Lowery has not been as lucky as she has. Throughout the company, it's widely speculated and across-the-board accepted but not _actually_ confirmed that he has been behind the leaks to the media. Claire thinks so, too, at least as far as all the security footage is concerned – _he was the only one from my team still there_ , she thinks – and probably the classified Indominus memos and information, too – _that first park was legit_ , he'd said; _they just needed dinosaurs,_ he'd said, and goodness knows he boasts the tech skills needed for hacking InGen – but nobody had bothered to speak to her during _his_ investigation, so she thinks the company probably didn't really give him the relatively fair fight, the second chance, they gave her, and that saddens her.

She gave him a hard time that day; she gave him a hard time _always_ , but if he hadn't been willing to sic the T-Rex on her (a button she knows couldn't have been easy to press, no matter what his true feelings towards her might have been), she wouldn't look like the hero in this whole mess, and Masrani wouldn't have had a reason to give her that second chance, and she'd probably be out of a job, too. If Lowery hadn't been willing to sic the T-Rex on her, she thinks, with a much more honest perspective, she and the three guys she cares about more than anyone else in the world would probably have never stepped foot off that island. She needs people with their attitude towards the dinosaurs – _be honest, Claire_ , she thinks; _Lowery's attitude, Owen's attitude; it's only recently become yours, too_ – on her team, so she wishes there was something she could do.

The second horrible thing she learns is that while they were looking into her decisions and keeping her in the dark about their present ones, they were readying a team of humans to return to the island. By the time she finds out, it's less than twenty-four hours before that return mission is to begin, and there's nothing she can do. She knows it has to happen; going back is an inevitability, but they are _just_ reaching a point where they're _not_ headline news every night, and it just seems so soon, _too soon_.

To her surprise and secret delight, she's _not_ on the list of the people returning (not the first one anyway; she's sure she'll be on the second.) The first mission is volunteer-only, and they somehow miraculously got volunteers, mostly surviving members of the ACU, and when she hears their assigned tasks, she silently thanks the universe that Owen both hasn't been apprised of this happening and hasn't been asked to join because she knows he would've signed his name to the mission in a heartbeat.

The brave souls willing to board the first ferry back are to return to Nublar and attempt to re-contain Blue and the T-Rex, the only two predators not in their proper areas by the end of _the incident_ , at least as far as they can tell from the security cameras that are still up and running. The paddocks remained undisturbed throughout all the chaos. The herbivores in the valleys and the jungles were never as contained as the carnivores, and they've mostly stuck to their normal areas on the island, their homes for the last decade, so as far as _the assets_ (she cringes whenever she hears that term now) are concerned, they only have two very large problems.

Capturing one, semi-trained velociraptor seems a lot easier than capturing a T-Rex, and the businessmen and women glower at Claire whenever they discuss the Tyrannosaurus in the board meetings. She thinks they're waiting for her to apologize for ordering the opening of Paddock Nine because, for all intents and purposes, had she not done that, the T-Rex would've stayed nicely in her home like the other carnivores, none the wiser to what was going on elsewhere on the island. Claire has no more intention of ever apologizing for that decision than she does for the one that had her abandoning her post and running off into the jungle to find her nephews, so she ignores the accusatory stares.

Once the dinosaurs are contained and that task is done – _if that task gets done_ , she grimly, morbidly, _realistically_ thinks – the next order of business is a temporary repair to the shattered wall of the aviary, even though almost all of its inhabitants were shot down and eradicated before the final showdown on Main Street. They also plan to quick repair the various fences the Indominus broke; the sides of the mosasaurus enclosure gates need fixing, too, and they want to push the walkway back several feet because _holy shit_ , if that thing could jump like that to get to the Indominus, it could've jumped out and gotten guests, too, and then they're laughing – actually fucking _laughing_ – about how lucky they are that such a thing never actually happened in a decade of the park being open, and Claire's not sure if she wants to cry, quit, strangle them, or all of the above.

She walks in on the morning of the eighteenth day, the first day actually on island grounds, to a board room filled with smart boards. A few of them display several video feeds of both cameras on the island and cameras on their men and women in Costa Rica. Another features a virtual wall of heart monitors, and suddenly, upon seeing that one, she's back in the Control Room, realizing that _damn it, Owen Grady is right_ and _oh my god, what have we done_ as her best and brightest ACU members rapidly lose to the Indominus Rex, and she needs to sit down. She's barely breathing as the ferry docks on the island and soles of boots touch the ground. She hears Owen's voice in her head. _Those men are going to die._

She almost shouldn't have worried, as capturing her T-Rex friend ends up being almost stupidly easy. Finding her takes a little while, despite the still-active tracker embedded in her skin, but once they do, they all watch from the San Diego conference room as the ACU team takes a page out of Claire's desperate, stupid, last-ditch effort playbook and lures the aging, hungry beast back to Paddock Nine with a series of food and snacks and far-flung flares. She never sees a human, just the beacon that means her next meal, and if Claire weren't so goddamn nervous, she'd be smugly grinning at everyone who gave her shit for luring the T-Rex to the fight with a flare as the paddock doors slide shut, and the dinosaur devours a goat inside. The mosasaurus is weakened, too, from two and a half weeks in her enclosure without human care and regular frozen sharks, and applying the temporary fixes to the enclosures, there, at the aviary, and around the island, takes a few days but goes off without a hitch. Moving the walkways and applying permanent fixes, they decide, will require larger teams and construction equipment and can wait for later, so they establish temporary barriers around the streets nearest the mosasaurus, reminders to steer clear of the area.

The stateside team around her celebrates with each small victory, but Claire still feels like she can't really breathe. No one has specifically told her yet, but she _knows_ what all of this means – re-capturing the dinosaurs, fixing the damaged enclosures, moving the walkways – but while her head is _screaming_ no, her heart is sighing _yes_ , and she's not used to her head and her heart being such contentious enemies, so she tries not to think about it.

As the first week back on Isla Nublar draws to a close, there is no sign of Blue. No one has spotted her on the ground; they can't find her on any of the cameras, and, as she was never a part of the park, she doesn't have a tracking implant. The popular theory in the boardroom is that she has not survived the nearly month on her own, out of captivity, without her pack and without her Alpha. Claire doesn't have the heart to tell Owen.

"Did you find her?" he asks hopefully every night as she returns to their shared hotel suite. Masrani never bothered to make them move out of the suite they once shared with Claire's family, so it's almost become like their own little apartment.

"Not yet, babe," she sighs as she lays herself on top of his sprawled body on the couch.

He's turned into something of a couch potato since being released from his InGen contract, filling his days with video games and keeping up on the news reports so he can tell her what the media's saying and she doesn't have to watch. She would find his idleness irritating, except she knows he's still grieving, and she knows job hunting could lead to him re-locating, a possibility she doesn't even want to consider, and exhaustion has almost always overtaken her by the time she returns in the evenings, so she's grown quite accustomed to burying herself in his warm neck and soft t-shirts until the dinners he makes for her are ready.

"You will," he always says confidently, kissing the forehead tucked under his chin and wrapping her up in an embrace. "I know you will."

Apparently Masrani thinks _Owen_ will because on the twenty-ninth day since _the incident_ , her bosses call early and ask Mr. Grady to accompany her to the office. He grabs her hand under the conference room table as they hand him an itinerary, and she's not surprised when they hand her a copy, too.

The plane for Costa Rica leaves in six hours.

 _They're going back._

* * *

She drags him down to the storage closet on the first floor, the one she'd cried into his shoulder in after her post-disaster-but-almost-as-disastrous first press conference. She flicks on the dim light, and he pulls the door shut behind them and leans in for a kiss. She leans back away from him and asks what the hell he's doing.

"Is that not what we're doing?" he asks, confused and a bit disappointed.

"No! I need to talk to you. Somewhere where no one will hear us," she says.

"Okay," he says, slightly concerned.

She lowers herself onto a box with a sigh, and he waits patiently, knowing she'll talk when she's ready. She almost can't bring herself to say the words, but she finally looks up at him and says, "They're moving towards re-opening the park."

His face is hard but unreadable, and she wishes she could tell what he was thinking. "They told you that?" he asks. She shakes her head no. It's not official, but…

"They don't have to," she says.

Silence hangs in the air for a moment as Owen's hands come to rest on either side of his waist, and he paces a bit, processing the information. Claire can't take the silence and says they shouldn't be surprised. The public has never been more interested in them. A new attraction always brought the eyes of the world, but the attention generated from _this_ is something else entirely, and it's somehow, miraculously, magically not all negative. Their online store is still up and running since their warehouse is located stateside, and sales are absolutely through the roof. She's never seen off-site merchandise numbers so high.

She continues by saying that at twenty-two thousand guests per day, that puts them on par with Universal Orlando and some of the smaller Disney parks, the 13th most visited theme park in the world, according to the previous year's statistics. If a lion got out at Disney's Animal Kingdom, Disney wouldn't shut down the entire park forever. They'd build a better enclosure, put up construction walls around the damage, get rid of the lion, but eventually, probably quicker than with Jurassic World, the show would go on.

"And our 26 million dollar lion is dead," Claire finally finishes.

"But it wasn't a lion; it was a fucking _dinosaur_ , Claire," Owen argues. "She _ate_ _people_."

"And Jurassic World is one of the largest sources of revenue for all of Masrani Global," Claire says. "Simon believed a breach in one of the enclosures was an eventuality waiting to happen. I doubt he quite envisioned _that_ when he put the emergency protocols into place, but it's the flagship of the company. They're not just going to write it off and let it go."

Their eyes lock, the battle to persuade him of her opinion having turned silent, but while she thinks he needs convincing to accept what she knows deep in her soul to be true, he doesn't. _We'd never re-open_ , she'd sighed, and he thinks now that was probably more for dramatics, more to get him to _stop fighting her, god damn it, stop undermining her authority and let her do her job_ than a truth she actually believed. Though he likes to think his influence had something to do with her eventual decision to close the attractions, her and Simon Masrani's instincts had been to make decisions about the Indominus catastrophe _for the benefit of the business_ so if she says Masrani Global isn't done with Jurassic World, then she would know.

"Shit," Owen says. "How long have you known?"

"Since they sent people back to the island," she admits. "It was obvious once I saw what the team currently there was sent there to do."

"What do you want to do?" he asks.

"I don't know," she admits.

He pulls the itinerary (that he's already balled up and vowed to ignore once he gets to the island) out of his back pocket and says, "We can forget this. We can tell them no. We can go anywhere."

"Is that what you want?" she asks.

He shakes his head and tells her this is her job, her decision. She counters by saying if they're really in this, if they're sticking together, it's _their_ decision. Silence blankets the small storage closet again. They both want to give in, to go back, maybe not forever, but _for today_ ,but neither wants to be the first to admit it.

"I'd like to try to find Blue," he finally relents. "I know her better than they do."

"I have to see this through the clean-up," she agrees. She goes on to say that they did a lot of things wrong, and she can't bail before those wrongs are righted in whatever way they can right the things that happened that day. Owen tells her, again, like a broken record, that it wasn't her fault. She nods. "But I made mistakes, too."

"And after everything with the Indominus is handled?" he asks. "When it stops being about that special brand of hell and starts being about getting things back to normal…what do you want to do then?"

Her lip quivers, and he's afraid he's said the wrong thing. She says, again, that she doesn't know. She doesn't _know_ what she wants to do; for the first time in her life, she doesn't _have_ a five-year plan anymore; she's not even sure what her next five _weeks_ look like (except she knows, without a doubt, that she wants him there next to her, wherever she may go, though she doesn't say that out loud) because who would have ever thought five weeks ago, they'd be _here_ , and that scares the hell out of her, but for now…for now…

"We're going back," Owen finishes when she can't.

She nods and repeats, "We're going back."

* * *

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	2. Chapter 2

_Thanks, everyone, for the reviews & favorites so far! They brighten my day! Keep 'em coming :)_

* * *

The deep blue water rushes beneath the large ferry as it quickly, _way too quickly_ , carries them towards Isla Nublar. The island is just beginning to make itself visible in the distance, and Claire stands right at the front of the boat, hands widespread on the rails, intensely staring at the piece of land straight out ahead of her, barely even blinking as the water beneath her mists her face. She wears a tank top and jeans and hiking boots, her hair messily tied into a tiny ponytail, a thick layer of sunscreen on her pale skin, because the animals are back in their paddocks, all except Blue, and everything is safe, but _that's what they thought the last time_ , and though surviving _the incident_ in a pair of heels has made her a bit of a minor celebrity, she's not terribly keen on the thought of repeating _any_ of that experience, right down to the day's sartorial decisions.

He should've known better then to come up behind her without making his presence known, but he is, apparently, not that smart, and she nearly jumps out of her skin when he gently touches her waist. She screams, and he chuckles, and she hits his chest so hard, he actually stumbles back a bit as she returns her hands to the railing and those whose attentions her scream had drawn turn back to their conversations. There are others on the ferry with them; they're not going in alone, but they're the only ones at the front of the boat, so it feels like they are.

He comes up behind her again, his strong chest nearly against her back, and touches her hands this time, gently prying them from the railing. He lovingly laces his fingers with hers, their palms entwined, and holds their arms out to their sides, factiously asking how she'd feel about having a whole _Titanic_ moment at the front of the ferry. Claire briefly wishes the ferry could have an _actual_ _Titanic moment_ before she turns her head to glare at him. The glare tells him everything he needs to know – she's not in the mood for jokes; she's questioning her decision, her ability, to do this; she's scared to death, and, with the way her lips are desperately fighting the instinct to curve into a grin, she _absolutely_ thinks he's funny – and he drops her hands, letting them return to their life-affirming grip on the railing. He takes his own glance at the island ahead of them before leaning his back against the railing of the ferry, facing her.

"We'll be okay, babe," he promises. "Like you said, the lion's dead."

"It's not really that," she mutters.

"Then what it is?" he asks. He knows she's struggled with guilt and shock more than anything else since everything happened, and since his thoughts approaching the island revolve almost 100 percent around Blue's well-being, he doesn't know what she might be thinking. She's silent. He puts a hand on her back and whispers her name, encouraging her to let him in.

She says she just doesn't know how she's going to feel – stepping back onto the ruined, apocalyptic Main Street of the place that was her greatest pride and is now, in many ways, also her greatest shame, the site where she felt more love and more fear and more small and more _human_ than she ever has in her life. She can't anticipate how that's going to make her feel, and she doesn't like walking into situations she can't anticipate, and she is still, in many ways, in charge here, so she _has_ to keep _herself_ under control so she can keep _the situation_ and the ferry full of people who are going to be looking to her under control.

"It's still all about control with you," he repeats, keeping his tone light, knowing nothing she just said would've been easy for her to admit to. "Sometimes you have to just let things happen."

She almost laughs at the absurdity of his advice. The last time she had been on the island ahead of them had been almost an entire day of _just letting things happen_. Her relationship with him is practically built upon _just letting things happen_ (because if he thinks sharing a home is on her relationship timeline before the first anniversary, let alone before the second date, he would be sorely mistaken) and everything _since_ the island has been _just letting things happen_ , and she knows that Claire Dearing, Senior Operations Manager of Jurassic World, hasn't really been in control of _anything_ since the Indominus Rex decided to hide from the thermal radiation scanners in Paddock Eleven, maybe not even since the Indominus Rex was designed. Instead of laughing, though, she just nods slightly and tears her eyes away from the island to look into his.

"Don't you think I've gotten a little bit better with that by now?" she asks, almost sneeringly.

He grins and leans over to kiss her bare shoulder ( _no kissing at work_ , she'd made him promise; he doesn't care, though he's not thrilled with the taste of sunscreen that ends up on his lips) before turning to watch the ferry dock on Isla Nublar, sliding his arm the rest of the way around her back.

There are about fifty other people with them – other executives, a few board members, an insurance person, two corporate attorneys, a photographer or two, other inhabitants of the island eager to get into their homes and get their belongings back – and they all disembark slowly, Claire and Owen leading the pack. They meet a technician who had arrived with the first group and pile onto a monorail to take them into the park, and he grabs her hand in support, for his benefit as much as hers, as the Jurassic World doors open, leading them inside, the pre-recorded narration on the monorail's speakers providing an almost discordant soundtrack to the journey. She nods, letting him know she's okay with this display of affection, her eyes straight ahead, almost afraid of what she'll see if she looks around.

They're headed for the Innovation Center, the building that also housed the labs and the way to the Control Room and the boardrooms and Claire's personal office, but getting to the Innovation Center requires walking through Main Street. There are underground tunnels for employees connecting much of the island, but the entrances to those lie near the hotels and the employee residences, and that's not the way they came in. Everyone slowly halts when they arrive, a silent understanding that Claire and Owen should be given a few moments alone at the scene of the crime, so to speak. She drops his hand as she takes the first step onto the ruined Main Street and takes a deep breath.

She's seeing this in the light of day for the first time, and it looks like a bomb hit, but it's somehow not as bad as she thought it'd be, not as bad as she remembered it looking in the dead of night or in the dark crevices of her memory. The shattered glass, the destroyed amber sculptures, the dismantled display dinosaur skeletons – it's bad; it's definitely bad, but it's not as shocking as she expected. The air doesn't automatically escape her lungs, and she isn't overwhelmed with an urge to sit down.

The red blood – and god, there's _so much_ blood; she briefly wonders if any of it's hers – caked and baked onto the cracked asphalt, glistening in the sunlight, almost doesn't faze her. Souvenirs from the crushed stand that was their hiding place litter the street, their colors faded from an undisturbed month in the Costa Rican sun. She catches Owen longingly staring at the fire pit that claimed Echo's life, his brow furrowed tightly, and briefly wonders if any of Echo's body is still left over there, knowing he won't be moving close enough to find out. She'll see all of this in her dreams tonight, she thinks. She doesn't have nightmares often, but when she does, they're almost always set here; they're shattered buildings and shattered lives and shattered bodies and blood everywhere, and _more teeth_.

But she can do this, she thinks. It – coming back to Isla Nublar, working in the park again, _re-opening the park again_ – all seemed impossible from the dark storage closet in San Diego, but here, on the ground, everything is different. She stands up a little bit straighter, a little bit bolder. This is manageable. It's not the first time a dinosaur wrecked something in this park; it's just the first time it happened on this scale, but this can be handled, things can be returned to their previous state, order can be restored, and she's okay.

Owen comes up behind her and, without touching her, asks in a rough voice how she feels now that she's actually back here.

She thinks about it for a minute, knowing she's actually probably doing better than he is right now, knowing her instinctual answer makes her sound _insane_ , before going with her gut and muttering, "Strangely normal."

* * *

Owen lets out a low whistle as Claire opens the door to the penthouse of the Masrani-owned hotel on the island. Their return to Isla Nublar had begun with a brief meeting in the control room; the two tech employees that had made the journey were trying to get all of the systems up and running again, and then everyone dispersed: the photographers to document the damage, the professionals to get a lay of the land, the park employees to get back into their homes and pack up their belongings. After a trip to Claire's office to pick up her keys, purse, and work laptop, a trip that had taken half an hour because Zara's desk looked like she'd be returning any second, and hers looked exactly how she'd left it, too, when she went to meet her nephews downstairs, the red error light on her printer still angrily blinking in need of more paper, and she _finally_ needed to take a minute and sit down, they had ended up here, boxes and tape in hand.

"This shouldn't take long," she had promised as she moved to unlock the door. "It came furnished. Most of the stuff inside isn't mine."

She hesitates in the doorway as he whistles behind her, but not because she's not alone. Being back in the penthouse feels like returning to her office, which unexpectedly felt weirder than being back on the island. She feels like a different person since _the incident_ , and this room, though also exactly as she'd left it a month ago, feels foreign, like a different person's home. Her things are on the shelves, and her clothes are in the closets (because yes, her expansive wardrobe requires more than one), but instead of a month, it feels like a year since she's been here.

Owen, on the other hand, is impressed. The elevator doesn't open directly into the room, a safeguard against eager children with lightning fast fingers achieving access to her dwelling, but she has the entire floor. The balcony outside wraps around the suite, the floor-to-ceiling windows around it boasting a spectacular view of the whole park. Get him a pair of binoculars and he's sure he could watch the mosasaurus feeding show from her home (he's also sure she's never thought to do that.) There's a gigantic flat screen TV and luxurious living room furniture and a dining table for at least a dozen with a chandelier hanging above the center, and that's just what he can see from the doorway.

"How much did this place set you back a month?" he can't help himself but wonder.

"Nothing," Claire says, finally wandering in. She sets her work laptop on the table near the door and tosses her keys next to it. She really doesn't have much to pack up; she has a sinking feeling she'll be moving back in soon anyway, but still, she's not sure where to start.

"They gave you this _for free_?" he asks in disbelief.

"It comes with the job," Claire tells him. "The manager before me didn't want it, but I didn't see the point in taking a ferry back and forth every day once I was promoted."

"When's the last time you actually left the island…you know…before?" he asks with an almost accusatory tone.

She spins on her heel and meets his gaze, her eyebrow quirked. "When's the last time you?"

He chuckles. "Touché, Ms. Dearing."

She grins slightly and grabs a few boxes and heads for the bedroom, deciding to start with her master closet. When Owen doesn't follow her, she returns to the living area to find him looking at the framed pictures on her entertainment system with a dopey grin on his face.

" _Oh no_ , what did you find?" she asks.

"This," he smiles, grabbing a frame from the shelf.

It's a picture of Claire and her nephews at Disneyland, taken seven years ago, according to the date on the frame. She's standing near a bench in front of the light pink castle in a striped shirt and jeans, and little Gray, who's standing on the green bench, is climbing _all over_ her, knocking the sequined Minnie Mouse ears off her head. Little Zach has his arms around her middle, his face half buried in her long, _so long_ , red hair, and she's _beaming_. She smiles and tells him that's the last time she'd seen her nephews. Karen had brought her family to visit her in San Diego as soon as she found out she'd be moving to Isla Nublar. Her sister had disguised it as a trip to see Claire before she moved far, far away, but she laughs and says she knew it was really about getting her kids to a Disney park while she still had a relative in close proximity.

Owen grins a little wider – he _loves_ this picture – and bumps his forehead against hers as she grabs the frame from his hands. "You should smile like this more often; it's a good look for you," he says. "The hair's not bad, either."

She bites her lip, suppressing a smile like the one in the picture, and Owen grins in victory as his eyes take another scan around the penthouse. Her company may have given her this residence, but it's so much more personal than he thought it'd be. Her office wasn't personalized _at all_ ; there wasn't a single photo or a small glimpse of her anywhere in that room, and he thinks he expected her home to be no different, but he was wrong. Photos litter the living room; there are little touches of her everywhere, and when he realizes she let him in to see this side of her with no hesitation whatsoever, he resists the urge to pick her up and go discover what the ceiling of her bedroom looks like.

Claire's voice trembles a little as she says she loves that picture, too, and she can't believe she let seven years get away from her. She says she's not a very good aunt. Owen grabs the picture again and holds it in front of her face.

"Well, you've done something right because those boys _adore_ you," he says. "Ask for another picture with them, and I'm pretty sure it'd turn out a lot like this one."

"Oh," she says suddenly. "We should get their bags while we're here. Ship them back home."

She probably needs to put together a team to spend a few days making sure _everyone's_ things get shipped back to their owners – it would cost a fortune, but it might save the company some money on lost damages in the end – but that's tomorrow problem.

Owen nods. "Why weren't they staying _here_?" he asks. "You've got the space."

"They're teenage bo… _I don't know_ ; wouldn't you have wanted your own room at that age?" she says defensively, with exasperation.

"Not if my aunt lived in a place that looked like _this_ ," he says honestly. _Not if his girlfriend lives in a place that looks like this_ , he thinks, as he turns back to the other pictures. His eyes zero in on one of Claire and her sister, and he grabs it next. "Karen was here?" he asks in surprise.

Claire laughs as she looks at the new photo in Owen's hands. It's Karen and Claire in a Jurassic World gift shop, and Karen's pretending to taunt her with a giant T-Rex toy. She'll have to send Karen a text with this photo later, she thinks ( _Foreshadowing? How did you know?_ the caption will read because if she can't keep laughing about the absurdity of what she survived with that dinosaur, she'll probably start crying.)

"Yes," Claire says. "Yeah, a couple years ago."

She tells him the story – the boys had started asking to come, and it seemed like a no-brainer vacation since Claire could get them _so much_ , especially after she became the senior manager, but Karen was nervous, so Claire flew her down to check it out, to see for herself that it was safe, but oh god, please don't _ever_ tell the boys that because they'd _die_ if they knew. They'd told Zach and Gray they were taking a sister trip to the beach, which was only half a lie because for the three days Karen had been on Isla Nublar, she spent a decent portion of two of them in a bathing suit.

"I had actually kind of forgotten about this until the other day," Claire says sadly, remembering her sister breaking down in her arms as soon as Owen took the boys down to the hotel pool. "She had been teasing the boys before they left – if something chases you, run…that sort of thing."

"Oh jeez," Owen says with a cringe and a laugh.

Claire nods and says that she was joking with them because she'd been here. She'd seen behind the scenes and the paddocks and the state of the art security, and she never thought something would _actually_ chase them, and now she feels guilty for making those wisecracks. _At least they finally listened to you_ , Claire had joked. _They ran like hell, Karen_ , and Karen had stopped crying, saying she had just wanted the boys to have the trip she had – three days of wonder and fun and Claire.

Claire puts the frames back on the shelf and hands Owen some paper to wrap them up in. "But that was never going to happen," Claire says sadly.

Owen thinks she's about to be hard on herself again, so he scoffs and says, "Because you had to take a few meetings the day they arrived?"

She doesn't meet his gaze when she says, "Because Karen was here before the Indominus existed."


	3. Chapter 3

They're shuffling the packed boxes from the penthouse out to the hallway when corporate finds her. Richard Wisner, COO of Masrani Global, has arranged for a live televised announcement, they tell her, and they need her to come prepare as she'll be the one on camera. It's to air just in time to make Jurassic World the headline news of the evening on the East Coast ( _great, because nearly two weeks of being headline news wasn't enough_ , she sarcastically thinks) and they've set up a small hair and makeup room in one of the vacant hotel rooms downstairs. She sighs, knowing she doesn't have much of a choice in the matter, and reaches for a box, saying she just needs to get something more professional to wear.

"Oh no," her colleague tells her. "Richard wants you to wear that."

"A tank top and hiking boots? On national television?" she asks, almost horrified, pursing her lips and closing her eyes to take a calming breath when Owen _audibly_ _snorts_ at the prospect.

Despite the casual wardrobe, two people are in the process of making her head "camera ready," curling her hair in an attempt to replicate the way it had looked in some of the leaked footage, when the colleague who had retrieved her from the penthouse hands her the speech Masrani wants her to make, the speech that confirms what she already knew, though that doesn't stop her stomach from leaping into her throat when she finally sees the words. She orders everyone out of the room, repeating the command in a firmer voice when no one moves to listen to her.

"Not _you_ , Mr. Grady!" she calls as Owen starts shuffling out of the room with everyone else. He waits until everyone is gone and pushes the door shut behind them. Claire holds out the piece of paper. "And there it is," she says in a near whisper.

The rage that had become an almost permanent fixture within him in the days immediately following _the_ _incident_ returns at its utmost intensity when he reads the speech they've given her. At its core, it simply states that Jurassic World will live again, but the speech is full of cool, corporate lingo and indirect references to the catastrophe the woman they expect these words to flow out of lived through, and he can tell from the way it's written that they want her to gloss over everything that's happened, be detached and unruffled when it comes to speaking about the past, straightforward when it comes to announcing the re-containment of the _assets_ , and enthusiastic when it comes to talking about the future.

Before he can tell her exactly what he thinks of _this_ _bullshit_ , she's opened her laptop and placed a Skype call to Richard back in San Diego. Claire had always gotten along well with Richard; he wasn't as warm and personable as Simon was, but he was candid, especially with the senior employees, and she appreciated that. That's why, when she asks him why she had not been involved with the decision to re-open Jurassic World, he says honestly, "We weren't sure how receptive you'd be to that plan."

She laughs in disbelief and simply asks why, and Richard knows she's shifted the topic of discussion to the decision in general. Money, he tells her. The beginnings of lawsuits are just beginning to roll in, but the litigation itself will take _years_. Insurance will cover some of the eventual, inevitable payouts, but that, too, resolving those claims, will take years, and it won't cover everything, if their legal and financial experts are correct. They have the money to spend on re-opening _now_ , and the public is still interested _now_ , and they need the revenue from the park to survive the fallout from the disaster. Guests with vacation packages scheduled between _the_ _incident_ and the re-opening can be given _waivers_ , not refunds; employees can return to their jobs instead of being granted severances packages; the online store can stay up and running; the operating participants and advertising partners within the park can offset some of the costs, and it's now or never. Normal as it feels to be here, Claire still thinks she could probably live with _never_ , but instead of vocalizing that thought, she simply asks why _she_ has to be the one to make the announcement.

"The public trusts you, Claire," Richard tells her. "Hell, they _love_ you. If they see you there, on the ground, working to re-build, they'll trust that it'll be okay to come back."

She tells him she intends to stay with Jurassic World through the aftermath and the cleanup, however long that might take, but after that…she understands that she's become the face of this entire park, but she's not sure if…well, is it really okay if _she's_ the one to…

"What are you saying, Claire?" Richard asks, and she sighs. She hasn't been this nervous and inarticulate in a professional conversation since college.

"Do I need to resign before the focus here shifts to re-opening?" she asks bluntly.

He tells her he's sure no one could replace her as the park's manager ( _that means they looked_ , she thinks, _and no one else_ wants _the job_ ) before reminding her that Jurassic World was not the shining cash cow of the corporation because of her poor leadership. "So resign if you want to," Richard says. "But only if you want to, and I, for one, hope you don't."

She doesn't, something she says with conviction, which surprises Owen, considering she shuts her laptop and picks up the speech again with slightly trembling fingers. They're going to have to talk about this later, but for now, the announcement time draws nearer and nearer, and she gets more and more visibly nervous as she scribbles mysterious notes onto the speech with a pen, and since she barely made it through the first few post-incident press conferences, Owen's not sure she can handle an announcement like this yet.

But then they're outside on a rubble-filled Main Street, and he's watching as Claire Dearing, punctilious stickler _Claire Dearing_ , all but _ignores_ the speech Masrani Global wrote for her.

She hits the important point – Jurassic World will live to see another day – but she replaces all instances of _assets_ with _animals_ and speaks of their care and livelihood with consideration and kindness, and she explicitly promises the genetic manipulation that led to the Indominus tragedy will not be a part of the park's future, nor will the victims of such tragedy ever be forgotten. The people behind the cameras don't know what to do. They know she's going off-script, but her speech is broadcasting live all over the world, and cutting the feed in the middle means admitting her declarations were not in their plans, so they almost have no choice but to let her continue.

Owen's not sure what to think as he watches her, a smirk on his face as the executives around him grow more and more uneasy with how this is going, though he finally understands just why she was _so_ nervous before this thing started if _this_ is what was coming out of her pen. He's trying his damndest not to just burst out laughing. He thinks she's probably saying what the public really needs to hear, what _she_ needs to hear if she's going to consider being here, and he _likes_ her apparent vision for the future of this establishment, and he knows she's going to be in _so much trouble_ when the cameras stop rolling, but he's never been prouder of her.

He tells her as much when she walks over to him when the broadcast ends, touching his arm, wanting it around her, but not wanting to break her own self-imposed rules about public displays. He squeezes her in a hug, perfectly content with the idea of having the rule-breaking blamed on him, and he keeps his arms locked around her waist as he pulls back.

"You've got some _balls_ , Dearing," he tells her with an impressed tone after expressing his enormous pride.

Her cheeks flush pink, almost embarrassed, and she chuckles, adrenaline coursing through her veins, and oh, she doesn't know what's come over her. She's assertive and particular, but she doesn't openly defy her bosses; she doesn't cause trouble at work with her superiors; she always says what they want her to say with a smile because she almost always _agrees_ with what they want her to say, but there are a lot of things true about her now that weren't true just a few short weeks ago, and she doesn't for a second think to regret what she just did.

Until her phone rings.

* * *

It's not Richard on the other end of the call. She expected it to be Richard, ready to rip her a new one for single-handedly redefining the future of Jurassic World on international television, but it's not Richard. It's worse.

It's Karen.

Her sister and her nephews had arrived home _just_ in time to see her announcement. "Aunt Claire's on TV," Gray had called from the living room. "She's on the island!" he had said, and Claire thinks she should've known that her sister's fingers would fly faster on a touch screen telephone than her boss's.

" _How could you go back there and not tell me_?" Karen shrieks, and even though Claire has the phone to her ear and not outstretched in front of her, Owen hears every word. "I mean, we all knew you would have to go back, and god, I don't know, maybe it's better I didn't know, but _how could you not tell me, Claire_?"

And that's all she gets out because then the call is usurped by two overly-excited boys with a rapid fire barrage of questions.

 _What's it like there?_

 _Is Owen there, too?_

 _Have you seen any dinosaurs yet?_

 _How's Blue? Is she okay?_

 _When's the park re-opening?_

 _Are you staying? Is Owen staying?_

 _Can we come back, too? When can we come visit?_

 _Why did you go back to the island without us?_

At that, Karen cuts back in with an, "Are you fucking kidding me?" directed to her sons.

" _Mom_!" Gray says in the background, shocked by the obscenity that escaped his mother's lips.

"Sometimes the situation calls for it, little man," Karen says.

Claire smiles slightly, ready to answer any of their questions, but then she hears cries of _seriously_ and _not fair_ and _come back_ and she knows Karen has relocated to a more private location.

"You're staying, aren't you?" Karen asks softly.

"Oh, I don't…nothing's been decided yet, Karen," Claire promises.

"I saw you standing on that destroyed street, and I just…are you not just _terrified_ to be there?" Karen asks, nearly crying again. "Gray still wakes up screaming about the Indominus almost every night. Zach's almost always awake in the middle of the night, too. How could you think about being there every day so soon?"

Claire sighs. She says it's not really like that for her. The entire day was horrifying, causing more fear than she ever thought one person could feel at any given time to go coursing through her system, and no, she hasn't seen a dinosaur yet, and she has no idea how she might feel when she does, but when, like her, you've read every first-hand account from the people who survived the original park, and when, like her, you've seen dinosaurs every day for seven years, and when, like her, you've been the one to oversee the building of the paddocks and order and monitor regular ACU practice drills just to make sure your team is the best it can be, you accept that something like that can happen. You don't _expect_ it to, obviously, certainly not on that scale, and you try your hardest to make sure it doesn't, and even then, you don't really understand _just what it will be like_ if it does, but somewhere, in the back of her mind, at some point, she had accepted that _it could_ , so when _it did_ , and when it happened _to her_ , she did her job and _stopped it_ ; she survived.

"So you want to tempt fate and go for round two?" Karen asks. Claire sighs again. "Seriously, you _really_ still want to be the manager of that park? After everything that happened…I know you're ambitious, but is that really what you want?"

"No… _yes_ ," Claire says. "Look, I don't know, but…"

"But you can't stand the thought of anyone else doing it," Karen finishes.

She says it as a statement, not a question, because it's not, and Claire almost grins. Karen's always known her a little too well, even when thousands of miles separate them. She mutters, "Something like that."

* * *

Her wide eyes find Owen when her phone rings again almost as soon as Karen hangs up. This time, it's the call she was expecting, and Owen knows she must be nervous, because hell, he's nervous _for her_ , but she takes a breath, and, with a little nod of her head, presses the green button and answers with a firm hello.

"What the _hell_ was that, Claire?" Richard yells, and again, even though the phone is to her ear, Owen hears every word.

Claire stands, cringing, as Richard yells at her, and Owen thinks she's handling it better than he expected she might, because unlike him, he imagines, Claire Dearing probably does not have a lot of practice getting scolded by her superiors. He picks up every few words as Claire listens and her boss speaks, and he's thinking about what corporate asshats they all are for getting angry with her for daring to talk about past, present, and future dinosaurs as if they're _more_ than just dollars, _more_ than just data on a spreadsheet, when her sharp, cool voice pulls him from the deep reverie of thoughts in his head.

"Things are going to be different if you re-open this park on my watch, Mr. Wisner," she confidently assures him.

If money is the sole motivator, she thinks, nothing about how this place is run will change, and when the hoopla from the re-opening dies down, they'll be right back to _bigger, louder, scarier_ when the numbers slip, and she knows she can't let that happen, or else they'll be right back here, too, standing on a wrecked Main Street in a year, two tops, if they're lucky. Owen hears the reply loud and clear as Richard asks her what she believes gives her the _authority_ to make those kinds of public declarations and promises without the executive board's approval.

"I am still the operations manager of this facility, and one quick call to any news outlet in the world could produce a reel of footage that I think would prove me to be _uniquely qualified_ to make decisions about the _assets_ and how they are managed," she says.

She sneers the word _assets_ , and Owen watches in admiration as she goes on to say that they can either listen to what she has to say and include her in the decisions about the future of this establishment going forward, or they can fire her (a bold move, given how close she came to _actually_ being dismissed from the corporation) and find a _new face_ of Jurassic World because she is willing to play the role of their performing publicity monkey in the wake of everything's that happened, but she won't do it unless she's taken seriously in her _actual_ job going forward, and then he gets what she figured out earlier that day, when she closed her laptop, rewrote the script and defined the future of the park all on her own.

Masrani Global needs Claire Dearing more than Claire Dearing needs Masrani Global right now. It's no longer an mutually beneficial relationship. She could go on to succeed elsewhere without them, but she's their face, their savior, the warrior woman who stopped the monster _they_ created, the one who everyone will look to when deciding how to feel about the re-opening of the park and, as an extension, Masrani Global as a whole. _If they see you there, they'll trust that it'll be okay to come back_ , Richard had said, and Owen grins. She's a pawn in their publicity game, but she's not going to be a passive one. It's in their best interest to keep her here, something both sides know full well to be true, and Richard might be Claire's boss, but _Claire_ holds all the power.

He comes back to reality just in time to hear Claire vow that if they even _think_ about ordering InGen to perform gene splicing to that extent again, _so help her god_ , she will leave and do everything she can to have this place shut down faster than he can _say_ Indominus Rex because, eventuality or no, something like that will _not_ be happening again as long as she is in charge here. The pride swells within him again as he watches the same woman who, just a few short weeks ago, rather flippantly declared _yeah, that's kind of what we do here_ , when he scolded her for going and _making_ a new dinosaur proclaim that there will be _no_ designer dinosaurs ordered as long as she has something to say about it, and maybe everyone on the board needs to take a step back and remember what John Hammond's, what Simon Masrani's, dream for this place actually was, and Owen recognizes that voice. That's her corporate bitch voice, her _take no bullshit_ demeanor, and suddenly, the air around him feels just a little _too_ hot.

Watching her assert her authority over anything and everything at Jurassic World has always been the quickest way to turn him on, unless that authority was directed against him and sometimes _even_ _when_ that authority was directed against him, depending on what she wanted, or if the annoyance he felt towards her managed to outweigh the attraction at any given moment. Watching her now, fighting for the dinosaurs, _demanding_ to be taken seriously…well, Owen changes his mind about Claire in front of the T-Rex paddock being the hottest thing he's ever seen, and she's fully immersed herself into manager mode again, which can only mean one thing.

She's decided to do this. She might not have figured it out herself yet, but Owen knows she's decided to do this, and the atmosphere around him finally grows silent as she finishes her second impassioned, fearless speech of the hour.

"Is that all, Ms. Dearing?" he hears Richard firmly ask.

Claire sighs and decides to take one more chance. "No, actually, there's one more thing I want."

* * *

The wind whips the short red tendrils of hair out of her recently redone ponytail as the helicopter arrives on Isla Nublar. If declaring the end of Designer Dinosaurs is her first official act as the post-incident operations manager, then getting Lowery Cruthers back is her second. Turns out he'd been hanging out in his apartment in Costa Rica, unsure of where to go or what to do after being fired a few weeks back, and he'd been more than happy to drop everything when Claire called and offered to chopper him in.

He steps off the helicopter, engulfing her in a hug, and she awkwardly pats his shoulders.

"Oh, um…okay," she says, completely taken aback by the display of affection.

"I can't believe you made me do that to you; I never would've forgiven myself if you'd died," Lowery mutters, arms still around her.

"Well, I didn't," she says, wiggling herself free from his embrace. He pushes his glasses back onto his face and apologizes, putting his hands at his sides. "Would you like your job back?"

"They want…they want me to come back?" Lowery asks in disbelief.

"No," she says honestly. " _I_ do." He kind of chuckles nervously upon hearing her response. "Is there a problem?"

"Well, it's just…I always thought you really only tolerated me, at best," he admits.

She narrows her eyes at him and says while she finds his taste… _questionable_ (he's wearing a black t-shirt that features a nasty looking T-Rex coming at a redheaded woman with short hair, a purple tank top, and a flare, and _good lord_ , she does _not_ want to know where he got that and resists the urge to chastise him further about why he thought _that_ would be an appropriate thing to wear back here and couldn't he have bothered to change his shirt first?), he was damn good at his job and passionate about the park and the dinosaurs, and that's what she needs if they're going to move this place forward.

"Plus, you had my back throughout _the_ _incident_ ," she concludes. "So what do you think?"

"No more crazy hybrids?" he asks. "Just dinosaurs?"

"As long as I have anything to do with it," she promises. She knows the dinosaurs in the original park featured a degree of genetic manipulation as well, as do all of the species inhabiting the island upon which she's standing, and she's okay with that, but she thinks she might spend the rest of her life making sure no more Indominus Rexes come out of that lab, and the more people she has on her side, the better. She narrows her eyes at him again, suddenly remembering mutterings about a _Pepsisaurus_ or something insane like that, and adds, "I'll still be acquiring corporate sponsors for our attractions, though."

"Yeah, yeah, I get it," Lowery nods. "I'm in. What do you need?"

They head away from the helicopter, back towards the Control Room, as she tells him she needs it up and running again, at its full capacity, before large quantities of workers and outside contractors arrive. They're still a ways away from that – she'll have to meet with partners and investors, determine who wants to re-open their establishments and continue their contracts (she's sure there's a catastrophe escape clause in their somewhere) and who might need a little more convincing. They have to design the new Main Street, see what else is damaged, establish a timeline, assess what truly needs to be done, but she'll feel safer being here now and in the days to come with all of the cameras and all of the implant tracking systems up and functional, as if twenty thousand people were walking through their gates tomorrow.

He nods, pressing the button on the elevator that will take him up to Control. "You got it, boss," he says. "I'll do my best."

"Thank you, Lowery," Claire says.

"Hey, Claire," he says as she turns to go her separate way. Her quizzical gaze fixes upon his face, and he says, "So you and the raptor guy, huh?"

She rolls her eyes and turns away, heading down the hallway, unable to fight the small smile that crosses her face.

* * *

 _Thank you for the reviews so far! Seriously, I live for 'em. Keep them coming! :)_


	4. Chapter 4

_To make up for my all-business, Clawen-light Chapter 3, here's an all-Clawen Chapter 4! Enjoy!_

* * *

She hears her raptor guy before she sees him, finding him in her office in an argument with some of the executives that had made the journey with them. Claire had told him she'd meet him back here before heading to his bungalow to pack up his belongings, but it seems her colleagues are not too fond of that plan. They don't want anyone going out that far, not past the hotels or the main area of the park, not while there's still an asset out of containment. Owen yells that it's _his_ animal out of containment, and Claire stands beside him in solidarity. The couple stares the executives down, fury on Owen's face, an almost-bored, _are-you-fucking-kidding-me_ look on hers, and the executives eventually back down, deciding if anyone can handle an encounter with the missing asset, it's them, and they order security to let their car pass through the gates.

She surprises him when she asks him to drive, tossing him the keys to her car. She surprises him again when he climbs into her car and finds her slumped in the passenger seat, her body leaning against the door. He starts the car and heads for his little corner of the island, finally asking her if she's alright once they've left the hustle and bustle of the park.

"I'm exhausted," she says, laughing at how silly that feels when she checks her watch and realizes it's only three-thirty in the afternoon. "This is the first moment I've had to breathe since the penthouse."

"You've had a busy day," he agrees. "I see you've made a decision."

"What?" she says, picking her head off the side of the vehicle. "Oh, no. Not…not really."

"Come on, the TV speech, the way you were talking to Richard, ordering Lowery back…it sure sounds like you have," he says, and he knows this isn't fair. He shouldn't be doing this to her when she's literally lacking the ability to sit upright, but it's the first moment he's had to really talk to her since her penthouse, and since her eyes are going to close the second her head hits the pillow tonight, he doesn't know when he might get this chance again.

She sighs and realizes he's right. She knew, in the back of her mind, in the bottom of her heart, that there was never really a decision to be made. She was always going to be here; she never really left. She thought she was just going through the motions, doing her job until she decided whether or not to keep it (because she's not one to do _anything_ half-assed, even if she thinks she has one foot out the door,) but nobody who wasn't intending to be here for the long haul would've acted the way she's been acting today, and _damn it, Owen Grady is right again_ , and as she glances at him, she realizes she's not sure when it happened, but even though she wants things to be different, nothing really is, because she's still choosing her job over the people she cares for.

"I understand if you don't want to make the same choice," she says, defeated, suddenly scared that the pull she feels towards Jurassic World, the sense of responsibility that's making her stay, is going to cost her _him_.

"If you're here, I'm here," Owen says simply, keeping his eyes on the road.

"You don't have to do that," she insists. "This was supposed to be _our_ decision, and I just…"

"Hey," he says, and her eyes meet his for a brief moment before he turns back to the road ahead. "Maybe it's what I want, too. Did you ever think of that?"

"Is it?" she asks. They haven't found Blue yet; she thinks there's nothing on this island for him.

"I don't know," he admits. He wants her. That's enough. He'll find something to do.

Claire stares out the window and wistfully, unrealistically hopes that maybe no one will want to come back when they re-open. Footage from _the_ _incident_ is playing out like an action-adventure movie on the news; people who have never even come _close_ to seeing a dinosaur in person before couldn't possibly understand, but maybe, when faced with the possibility of going to the murder island, people will stay away and stay home, and then she realizes she's inadvertently hoping her company will fail and just stops talking. Owen glares at her again and scoffs and says she knows better than that.

She pulls out her phone and checks Twitter, logging in to the account that Zara insisted she needs but never uses, hoping to gauge the public reaction to her announcement. The decision to re-open isn't completely without its critics, but the tweets she sees are mostly a lot of "yaaaaaaas" (why is it spelled like that? She has no idea.) and "shut up and take my money" and people clamoring for a timeline or an opening date or people to cosplay with because they want to come to the re-opening dressed like her or Owen or, good lord, even _Blue_ , and she briefly makes a note on her phone to ban anyone with the audacity to show up in an Indominus costume from being allowed into the park. She throws the phone into her bag; if the boys, if Owen, if _she_ all want to come back, she should've known the public would want to, too. She sits up enough to reach his hand, and upon her soft touch, he takes one off the steering wheel and laces his fingers with hers.

"You don't have to do this, you know," he says as he pulls onto the bungalow's lawn. He told her it was her job, her decision, and he's going to stand by that. He's sticking with her either way, but while her mouth is saying yes, everything else about her is still screaming _I don't know_ , and this is the first big decision he's been around for, so he doesn't know what's really Claire and what he should attribute to the exhaustion – the mental, emotional exhaustion – of the day.

"What am I supposed to do, Owen?" she asks. They climb out of the car and slam the doors, hands meeting again as they head up the porch steps.

"Quit!" he says, swinging the bungalow door open. "Fuck 'em. Walk away. This place can survive without you."

"I can't do that," she insists, joining him inside.

"Do you _want_ to?" he asks, dropping her hand.

"I can't," she says again. "I can't stop history from repeating if I quit, and they're probably going to structure the entire grand re-opening around me, around _us_ , and I've been with this company since college, and _come on_ , Owen, who's going to hire the woman who let the _dinosaurs_ out?"

"That's bullshit," he says. "You could get another job in a day, and you know it." When she doesn't say anything, he softens his voice a bit and adds, "It's okay if this is what you want, babe; I just don't know if it's really what you want."

"I've been with this park since the beginning. I've been on this island for _seven years_. It's my life's work," she says, and the same mortified look she's carried with her throughout this whole ordeal settles on her face.

"You're too young to say something like that," he says, opening the fridge and fishing out a bottle of Coke. He has no idea if it'll still be any good, but he passes her one, too.

She takes a sip of the liquid she'd normally never drink, and slides onto a stool at the kitchen island, watching him as he chugs half his bottle. A proposition lingers at the tip of her tongue, an idea that's been bubbling since earlier that day, and she knows she shouldn't, not now, not in the middle of _this_ , but she can't help herself.

"What if I said I was willing to hire you right now at 10k above your InGen salary to raise another pack of raptors?" she says. He freezes, placing his bottle on the island counter, blinking at her as if she had just short-circuited his brain.

"Can you do that?" he finally asks. The fire that's been blazing inside of her all day has returned; he can see it in her eyes, the sparks replacing the exhaustion from the car.

"Well…no, not that easily," she admits. "But I can put in the recommendation. I can fight for it. I _will_ fight for it."

"Is this just to keep me around?" he smirks, leaning a little closer towards her.

She shoots him a _look_ and says, "While that, admittedly, is a _personal_ benefit to my proposal, your work with them was extraordinary. It'd be a shame for that to have all been for nothing."

"Alright, I'm listening," he replies, and she grins; she knows she's got him.

"I would be your direct supervisor this time, but I think our relationship is strong enough to survive that," she continues.

"Yeah, I think I could work with that," he agrees, trying not to remember how turned on he was while he watched her stand up for herself earlier.

"Of course, the eventual goal here would be to turn the raptor pack into a guest attraction, probably a show of some sort, if the new pack performs as well as the original one did," Claire finishes. "This, of course, would be a few years down the line, giving you proper time to establish your relationship with them, which should coincide nicely with the timing of our need for a new guest experience, so I think this would be a mutually beneficial arrangement."

Owen scoffs and picks up his cola again. "No," he says simply. "No attraction."

"InGen had you working with the raptors for a covert military experiment, and I sure as shit won't be doing that, so why should I throw my resources and confidence behind you and the raptors if the guests won't benefit?" she asks.

"Because it's fun," he replies.

She chuckles. "That's…not a real reason."

He puts the drink down again and leans on his forearms across the counter, moving towards her, lips and eyes pursed in a heated gaze. She leans herself a little against the counter, too, the look on her face just _daring_ him to challenge her.

" _God_ , you are infuriating," he finally sneers.

"It's part of the offer, Mr. Grady," she declares. "Take it or leave it."

"Blue, if found, is _not_ to be part of the attraction," he states firmly.

She tilts her head a little to the side in an almost condescending manner, as if what he just said is the cutest thing she's ever heard if he thinks he'll actually get that, and he briefly thinks he wants to strangle her.

"We'll see about that," she replies, eyes half-closed in a sultry gaze.

"It's part of the _counter_ -offer, Ms. Dearing. Take it or leave it," he replies, throwing her taunt back in her face. He moves even closer to her, their faces mere inches apart and adds, in a low voice, "How badly do you want me?"

Her mouth instinctively drops open, as if she wants to say something but she can't quite find the words, and he shoots her a wicked grin, having carefully chosen his own language. Her eyes narrow again; she knows what he's doing, and _hold it together, Claire, don't let him win_ , and god, _when_ did it get so hot in here?

"Deal," she hears herself mutter as her hands reach out to grab his face, bringing their lips together in a passionate kiss.

* * *

She thinks this is the sexiest she's ever felt, making love with Owen on his bungalow's laid-out futon ( _of course_ he has a futon,) the hot Central American breeze spilling in through the open windows, surrounding their naked bodies. He's sprawled out on the mattress underneath her, her legs framing his hips, hands on his chest, her ponytail swaying as she moves above him, and though her eyes keep slipping shut, he's never taken his off of her because she looks relaxed and blissful and happy and, with the way the afternoon sunlight is radiating off her red hair, _so damn beautiful_.

Her movements and her breathing become increasingly erratic, and he tightens his grip on her hips as he sits them up, Claire in his lap, finally closing his eyes as he closes his lips around her breast. His hands help her hips continue their movements, and little gasps escape her lips. His thumb slips down between them, Claire stilling fully as she comes undone.

Owen wraps his arms around her quaking body, taking her with him as he falls back onto the futon, the length of her flesh pressed against his. She lazily presses hot, open-mouthed kisses to his neck, her head nestled between his neck and shoulder as her body relaxes, softly moaning with each exhaled breath as he takes over, one hand on the small of her back, the other tangled in her hair, pumping his hips beneath her until he's groaning in her ear.

Goosebumps prickle her arms mere moments after she rolls off of him and onto her side, the air suddenly feeling cool against her sweaty, heated skin. It only takes another moment for him to roll onto his side to meet her. The leg still thrown across his body slips down to loosely curl around his, and he engages her lips in a tender, sexy kiss. A few kisses later, he's chuckling against her mouth, and her hand slides from his hair to his chest, pushing back to ask _what_ is so funny.

"It's just…I always knew I'd get you in this bungalow eventually," he teases, his arms wrapping around her.

"Shut up," she says, shoving him softly, remembering his frequent, wildly inappropriate (but sometimes tempting…) offers to _consult_ in his home.

" _Hey_ , now, you're the one who offered me a job and then _jumped_ me," he argues. "That's not very professional of you, Ms. Dearing."

Her mouth hangs open in a false show of shock. "If I recall, _Mr. Grady_ , we were having a perfectly acceptable business negotiation, and then _you_ seduced me."

"Hmm…well, maybe we should make these bungalow meetings a weekly thing," he proposes, gently brushing her bangs away from her forehead. "You can pencil me in to that planner I know you're itching to go buy."

She replies with a little hum and a muttered, "Maybe…" as her lips find his again.

He cuddles her to him as they begin to lose themselves in another intimate make out session, their mouths meeting in slow, adoring kisses. One of his hands softly cups her head in his palm, while one of hers strokes down his bare chest before landing on his side. Just as she's hoping this moment between them never ends, their quiet serenity comes to an abrupt conclusion when a crash outside of the small home causes Claire to tear her lips away from him.

"What was that?" she asks, her neck craning up to look towards the doorway. She looks at him, fear in her fiery green eyes and repeats, "Owen, what was that?"

"I don't know," he mutters honestly. " _Stay here_."

He pulls on boxers and a plain white t-shirt, and she rolls onto her stomach, following him with her eyes as he grabs a knife and slowly opens the bungalow door. He tucks the weapon into the waistband of his boxers as he takes a few steps onto the porch. His toolbox and the various other materials he let collect on the outside table as he spent his days working on his bike lay in a mess a few feet away from the bottom of his porch, knocked over by someone or _something_. Claire's car rocks a little across the lawn, and Owen's head immediately turns in that direction, and though he now _knows_ who the culprit, the cause of this ruckus, is, she's still the last thing Owen Grady ever expected to see outside of his bungalow.

The raptor's snout is lowered, sniffing at Claire's vehicle, though her head whips up and around as she hears the door slam shut. Blue chitters (in recognition? If only he could be so lucky…) and moves towards a tree located mere feet from where Owen stands, from where Claire rests naked inside, and Owen freezes as their eyes meet. The hand furthest from the bungalow door comes up in front of him in defense, though he knows it won't do him any good if she's decided not to listen to him anymore.

After several minutes of this silent standoff, _because she just can't help herself_ , Claire comes out, asking, "Honey, what was it?" as the door swings open. She gasps when she sees Blue on the lawn, instantly, _forcefully_ gripping the arm Owen instinctively stretches out in front of her.

He barely gets the chance to catch a glimpse of her (though he gets a long enough look to figure out that she looks _unbelievable_ in nothing but one of his t-shirts – _Nope; it's her shirt; her shirt now; it'll never be his again_ ) before she takes a few steps behind his body, her other hand grabbing at his waist. She's already trembling, but when Blue hisses and snaps at Claire, she jumps, clutching Owen harder.

" _Hey_ ," Owen sneers at Blue, his voice firm. " _Knock it off_."

"Owen," Claire says with a heavy breath and a shaky voice.

"I'm not going to let her hurt you, baby," he promises.

Blue takes a few steps to the side to get a better look at the woman hiding behind her former Alpha, and Claire dreadfully whispers, "You might not have that power anymore."

He knows that's true; that's his biggest fear at the moment. Blue's been without him for a long time, and her training was nowhere near complete, and then the raptor growls at Claire again, her mouth opening slowly.

" _Hey_ ," Owen yells again. "I said _knock it off_!"

"She's only snapping at _me_ ," Claire says. "Why doesn't she like me?"

It takes everything in him not to look at her in utter disbelief, but he knows he needs to keep his eyes on Blue. "Did you _seriously_ just ask me why a _velociraptor_ doesn't like you?" he asks.

"I'm _scared_ ," she whispers defensively, and though he doesn't turn to look at her again, she can see his face soften at her admission.

Blue is the first dinosaur either of them has actually seen since returning to Isla Nublar, and while she knows Owen had returned in hopes of finding his last remaining raptor, Claire had hoped the first dinosaur she saw would not be one of the ones whose head had been in her lap on that fateful day in the jungle. She was hoping for something smaller, behind an industrial strength glass wall, and preferably with a lot less teeth.

"Go inside, Claire," he tells her. She starts to protest, so he repeats, a little firmer, " _Claire_ , listen to me. _Go inside_. Stay there."

Blue could bust right through the wall of his bungalow if she really wanted to, but she was calmer when it was just Owen on the porch, so he's hoping he can keep her on the grass. Claire listens to him and with a _be careful_ squeeze to his waist, slowly releases him and slips back inside. He hears her on the phone a few seconds later, telling someone back at the park that they have located Blue.

He knows he's going to look like a complete idiot when ACU shows up and he's on the porch in his underwear (Claire will, inevitably, have put her clothes back on – in which case, those tight jeans on her hips and his lack of proper pants may become problematic – and be looking picture perfect, except for the hair he good and messed up, he thinks proudly), but he doesn't really care how he looks, as long as he keeps her safe.

He's not sure whether to yell at her or thank her when one pale arm slips out the door and hands him his jeans, her form clearly visible through the screen door, but when ACU shows up with a van just as he's buttoning them over his boxers (a process that took far too long, as he was afraid to break his eye contact with Blue for too long,) he's grateful, for once, that she never really listens to him.

Someone else who won't be listening to him any time soon is Blue, who's staring directly at him when ACU knocks her out with a strong but harmless tranquilizer.

* * *

 _Thank you all for the great response on the last chapter! Please leave a review if you've got some time :)_


	5. Chapter 5

_Last chapter for this one. Enjoy (and see the notes at the end!) :)_

* * *

Blue slowly wakes up in her harness back in Paddock Seven as darkness falls, Owen right there next to her in the cage, and Claire watches it all from video feeds in the Control Room.

It's only her and Lowery in the darkened room. He's still fiddling with a few things, a soda and a big bag of chips at his side, and she sits sideways in a chair, her feet propped onto the workstation next to the one she's actually sitting at. Her position is casual and totally unprofessional, but she doesn't care how she looks because the employee, _the friend_ , in the room with her has already seen her at her most unreserved, and her boyfriend, several miles away from her safe confines, is about to touch a newly restrained but confused and _very angry_ dinosaur.

She's so nervous as Blue's eyes blink open and Owen runs over to the raptor that she thinks it might be a good thing that she's barely had time to eat today, and she wonders if this feeling, this nauseous anxiety that interacting with a dinosaur brings her, will ever again dissipate. Owen reaches out his hand, Blue fights against the strong restraints, and Claire holds her breath.

They're in for a fight later, she thinks, because she ordered a tracking implant placed into Blue while she was tranquilized, a call that earned her a dirty look but eventual consent from Owen. She's not sure how this is going to play out – Blue is technically InGen's, and while she's sure she can negotiate a contract comparable to those of the other assets ( _animals, Claire)_ that makes the next raptor pack theirs, she doesn't know what's going to happen with Blue. She's hoping InGen won't want her on her own and the deal will be an easy one to seal because as she watches Owen's face light up when Blue calms as he strokes her neck, she thinks keeping Blue for him might just be the hill she ends up dying on.

"Do you think she knew you guys were there?" Lowery asks, nodding towards the video feed.

"I don't know," Claire says. "I don't really know that much about them."

She doesn't know much about the dinosaurs, but she's never going to underestimate one or dismiss it as _just an animal_ again, so while the idea of Blue somehow being drawn from wherever she'd been hiding on the island by the knowledge that they were _there_ , that they had returned to Owen's bungalow, _sounds_ preposterous, she's not willing to write it off completely.

"So how much trouble did you get in for that announcement this afternoon?" Lowery wonders.

She grins and lets a tired chuckle escape her lips. "Not as much as I should have." A silence lingers between them for a few moments before she declares her turn to ask a question, and he nods. "Between you and me – _honestly_ – all those leaks to the press…"

He doesn't even let her finish her question before he nods and says, "Yeah, that was me."

She nods, too; she had suspected, after all. "Why?" she asks.

"I know they gave you a bunch of crap for leaving base and going out into the jungle, but I watched it all from in here, and I didn't want them to have the chance to make you a scapegoat," he says, and it's not the answer she was expecting. She didn't expect it to be about her; she expected it to be his own special middle finger to the people who were corporatizing dinosaurs, so she turns, a look of wonder on her face, and he chuckles. He gestures to his shirt and adds, "Sorry about all the cameras and stuff, but, you know, that footage was really _awesome_."

"Okay, I have to ask," she says, knowing she's going to regret this. " _Where_ did you get that?"

"Oh, there's this site online," Lowery says. "Yeah, independent artists can upload their…"

Claire raises her hand and shakes her head slightly, and Lowery stops. She's heard enough. Her hand comes to her temple as the idea of _fans_ creating _art_ from this whole catastrophe rolls through her brain and she says, "I don't…think I actually want to know."

"Please don't wear it again, right?" Lowery asks.

Claire glances at the shirt again, the shirt that depicts the scariest moment of her life, and she sees the annoyed glances and indignant stares directed towards her, the ones that colored almost every asset containment conversation, almost every conversation _period_ at Masrani Global over the past month, and she grins. The board will _hate_ that shirt. With a small, uncharacteristic, slightly devious giggle, she says, "No, you can wear that again."

"Really?" he asks in disbelief. Before she can change her mind, he says, "Okay, yeah, cool. So you're not mad about all the footage?"

"Oh, not _mad_. Not really," she admits with a sigh. The minor celebrity thing is weird, and she wishes her nephews hadn't been drawn into the media frenzy, and she could do without the cameras following her and Owen everywhere, but she can probably keep them off of Isla Nublar, at least until the park re-opens, though she's sure they'll find them in Costa Rica, at least until they finally realize how boring she and Owen are, but considering that footage is probably the only reason she's sitting where she's sitting right now, she decides that's a small price to pay. Her eyes, however, narrow in a critical gaze as she adds, "But the genetic makeup of the Indominus? That one certainly didn't do me any favors."

"Yeah, I saw that," Lowery says apologetically, a slight cringe on his face. "Maybe letting that one out was to stick it to the man." He says they can call that the official beginning of the anti-designer dinosaurs movement of Jurassic World, and she laughs, turning back to the big screen at the front of the room.

Owen finds them in the Control Room later that evening, and she's chewing on Twizzlers from the vending machine Lowery raided, watching the camera feeds on the wall, her feet still propped on the workstation beside her. Lowery's still working on something in the back corner of the room, but Claire looks like if it weren't for the candy dangling from her mouth, she'd be curled up asleep on the floor. Owen softly mutters a hello as he enters, not wanting to startle either of them, and Claire lets out a relieved breath, holding a hand up to momentarily grasp his as he walks by her to sit down in the chair next to her feet. He grabs her feet off the table and pulls them into his lap, and she grins, letting her head roll against the back of her chair. He smells like the jungle, despite only being out at the raptor paddock for a few hours, and she doesn't realize how much she missed the smells of the island until she smells them on him.

"How is she?" Claire asks, and Owen chuckles.

"You gonna pretend like you haven't been sitting in here watching me the whole evening?" he asks. She gives a half-hearted shrug, and Owen says Blue is doing just fine. "She's mad at me, but I think she'll get over it. We'll be okay."

"Are _we_ okay?" Claire asks, and Owen looks momentarily confused.

"Oh, the _implant_?" he finally realizes. He shrugs, having decided it was for the best after he had walked away and cooled down a bit. "She scared me, too," he admits. "Speaking of…"

Claire rolls her eyes; she knows what's coming, and she doesn't know how many times he's going to ask her this question before he accepts her answer. She pulls her feet from his lap, sits up fully, and says, "Really, Owen? _Again_?"

"Okay, yeah, I know you're probably tired of hearing me ask…" he starts, his hands landing on her knees.

"I'm just _tired_ ," she nearly whines, clutching his wrists.

"I just want to make sure that this is what you _want_ ," he says lowly. Lowery doesn't seem to be paying a bit of attention to them, but they're still not really alone. "That this decision is _yours_ and you're not choosing to stay because you feel _trapped_."

"What makes you feel like that might be the case?" she asks.

He brings a hand up to stroke her cheek as he replies, "Because whenever you think nobody's looking at you, you look terrified."

His answer surprises her; she's not used to someone keeping such a close eye on how she's feeling (though she's not entirely opposed to such a development in her life.) She pulls her legs up underneath her body in the chair and gently wraps her hands around just one of his.

"Do you know what will happen if I walk away?" she asks. "They'll find someone like me to run the new Jurassic World, and she will walk in here with her Harvard MBA and her determination to prove herself, to prove it wasn't a mistake because she can do this job, and she can do this job _well_ , and she will sit in these board rooms and talk about the animals as if they are _numbers_ , as if they're not actually alive, and things will go well, for a while, until the numbers slip by half a percentage point, which they inevitably will, and the company spirals into a tizzy, wondering what they can do to get the people interested again. So they'll add a ride here, an experience there, but eventually, when the numbers slip just a little too much, someone will sit in this building and say, 'Hey, remember that genetic modification we used to do? That wasn't such a bad idea! We could make a whole new dinosaur! The last one's pre-sale tickets sold out in thirteen minutes,' and New Claire, who knows _nothing_ about science and only understands the numbers, will think that's a wonderful idea, and then that new dinosaur will be _bigger_ and _scarier_ and _louder_ and have _a lot_ more teeth, and _nothing_ will change."

She says it so convincingly that Owen wonders how long she's been sitting on _that_ speech, and he rubs his calloused thumb against the soft skin of her hand as she finally, _finally_ , takes a breath.

She finishes by saying that while _yes_ , there is a sense of obligation at play here, she also _wants_ to stay here because she _loved_ it here, and she's invested so much of herself into this place that if she can make it better, she wants to do that, so _yes_ , she's staying because she feels responsible, but there's desire there, too, and it is her _choice_.

"But I need it to be your choice, too, and not just because of me because that won't lead to anything good between us," she says.

He kisses the back of her hand and promises it's not just because of her, though she'd be enough. Blue's still around, and there's a lot of unfinished business, a lot of wrongs here that he wants to right, too.

"So we're staying?" she asks, once and for all.

"We're staying," he confirms. "Now…how would you feel about me moving into that sweet penthouse of yours?"

She laughs and says she'll keep the penthouse for the inevitable late nights and early mornings, but she was thinking they could get a condo or something together in Costa Rica, somewhere they could go home to if, _god forbid_ , something like this ever happens again. The idea rolls off her tongue with ease, and Owen can't help but give her a proper kiss. The makeshift hotel apartment has been fun, but the idea of making a real home with her makes their relationship seem a little more real and a little less _for survival_ , and it's an idea that's just too good to resist.

"Lowery!" Owen calls, finally pulling his forehead away from Claire's.

"Yeah?" Lowery asks, his head peering around a computer unit.

"Can what you're doing wait until morning?" he asks.

"Yeah," Lowery says with a nod, popping a chip into his mouth. "Yeah, I could stop."

Owen turns back to Claire and says, with a knowing smile, "Ready to get off this island?"

He expects and emphatic _yes_ , knowing their tryst in the bungalow that afternoon would've turned into a full-blown nap had Blue not interrupted their cuddling, but that's not what he gets. Instead, Claire grows quiet and pensive, biting the edge of her lip as she stands and drops his hand.

"I need five more minutes," she says. She starts to walk away, and he makes motion to go with her. She turns and places a hand on his shoulder, keeping him in his chair. "Please don't follow me," she requests, and he can't do anything but nod.

She heads for the elevator, both men's eyes following her out, and Owen glances at the screen ahead of him once she's gone; it's his turn to worriedly watch the camera feeds now. He looks at Lowery, who looks as confused at Claire's actions as he feels.

"Think we can get a tracking implant for her, too?" Owen jokes.

* * *

She thinks she's officially lost her mind as her feet confidently carry her to Paddock Nine. She uses her Masrani badge to swipe herself in to the locked viewing area that once and will someday again hold dozens of guests, eager to get a glimpse at the most famous dinosaur of them all brutally devouring a goat. The long tunnel is dark and quiet, only illuminated by the moonlight spilling in through the windows, and she's not even sure what she's doing here, but she knows she had to come.

She fixes herself in the center of the window at the middle of the tube, staring into the large enclosure. Claire scans the habitat, silently searching, her brow furrowing when her eyes come up empty. She's not worried. It's dark, and so is the dinosaur; she didn't see her until she was far too close for comfort last time, and she had been holding a bright red flare then. Claire knows she's in there somewhere.

Eventually, after a few minutes, she _feels_ rather than sees the Tyrannosaurus Rex as she stalks towards the window, finally noticing Claire's presence at the glass, the ground shaking slightly with each step as she walks right up to the window, right up to Claire.

Claire stands at the window and soon, the T-Rex does, too, nothing but a sheet of glass separating her from the dinosaur's snout. She sucks in a breath on a short gasp, her heart pounding wildly in her ears, her lip trembling, and she wonders if the animal recognizes her. Her instinct is to run, or at the very least, take a step back, but she fights it. She doesn't move. She doesn't run. She's still. Watching.

Eventually, the T-Rex lets out a heavy breath, fogs up the windows directly in front of Claire, and walks away. She can't see it happen, the window obstructed, but the ground shakes again, and she knows the dinosaur has grown bored with her. Her breathing gradually returns to normal.

The fog slowly dissolves, just in time for Claire to catch one last glimpse of the creature, slinking with a grace surprising for an animal of that size back into her habitat. The T-Rex disappears back into the darkened trees, and once she's gone, Claire turns, disappearing down the darkened hall, back to Owen and back to Jurassic World.

* * *

 _In case it wasn't obvious, I was trying to channel the movie poster with the bit at the end there. I just love that image - Claire on one side of the glass & the Indominus on the other, so different dinosaur, same idea._

 _And we've reached the end of this little story, but don't worry - there will be more! If you're interested, I'd suggest following me either here or on Tumblr (which is under the same name that I have here) so you don't miss anything :)_

 _Thank you SO much for all of the reviews you guys have left on this story! I'm going to try to respond individually, but you all are just too kind :) See you next time!_


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